Poetry and Scientific Exposition: An Analysis
of Two Forms of Symbolic Representation

by Monica Wengrowicz Cooper

Introduction

Art and science are generally thought to be two different forms of human activity. When speaking of "arts," we normally use the term to encompass diverse types of art such as painting, poetry, and music, even though the modes of symbolization in the different arts are based on different characters such as notes, lines, and words. Science (and I refer here to natural science), however, communicates its findings using the same symbolization scheme as the literary arts, namely, the English language. The book Languages of Art by Nelson Goodman provides a set of categories that purportedly serve to analyze a symbolic representation in its form as well as in its referent. The exercise of examining the way in which a scientific paper is written and its comparison to a literary piece might allow us to understand where the work of art and the work of science are each located, as well as their means of symbolic representation. The questions one might ask are: how is the symbolization scheme used differently in the two activities? How different are the written symbols of the literary arts from those of science and in what way? How are the different meanings conveyed and what is the realm of those meanings? Is a scientific paper a literary art, and if not, why not? Is a literary piece fulfilling a scientific function? If the two forms are different, how do words "stretch" to do both tasks? Where does the work of art reside? Where does the work of science reside? The exercise of comparison for the purpose of analysis and understanding can be a very powerful means of illuminating features hitherto unseen. And Goodman's work can be very useful in guiding an exploration into a symbolic work. Goodman's analytical categories are used here in a novel way, namely directly applied to particular instances of symbolic representations. This approach is shown to yield an understanding of the way in which poetry and scientific writings have to be read.